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Do Not Build SaaS

dontbuildsaas.com

49 pointsfuelfive24 comments

"Don't Build SaaS!" -- Created with Google Docs, including meta tags targeting Twitter, and loading Google Analytics.

Back when those were created, SaaS was the frontier!

The good ol’ “you hate capitalism but use an iPhone” response. It’s not a good one.

I'm sorry, but it isn't the same thing at all. This is a 1:1 situation -- advocating against SaaS while actively using it, despite readily available options.

All three things I listed have free (as in beer and speech) alternatives that don't employ the SaaS model.

And apparently written using an LLM. Certainly illustrated with a generative model.

The author forgets that people need to eat and only a small slice of deep tech ever becomes real. It seems to me that this is written from a place of privilege, where a FAANG job isn't true progress for your bloodline.

Strivers are amazing human beings. It's okay to be a striver that works at Google. It's okay to build logging tools. We'll need those things in the future, too.

We all learn our lessons in different orders and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Last I checked you need ag tech to eat /s

Joking aside, it’s true that some folks have lives that require 350k liquid comp. If that’s you, staying at a cushy role in FAANG might be the right call. But for tons of brilliant people that’s not the case.

Few of those people really require 350k. That's a lot of charitable donation or medical treatments for family. Simply living a life that spends that much on a big house in an exclusive area and travelling extensively for vacation is more of a want than a need.

If we could have solved the really big problems that remain with SaaS apps, we probably would have already. We're really good at building them. Most of the really big problems the world is facing require really hard solutions. Often this involves commercializing core research (like the foundation model companies) or building in atoms and not just bits. The sheer amount of talent and money going into SaaS feels like a massive misallocation of resources.

What we're not good at is overcoming humans. We could have a much better present that needs less fixing if people simply behaved differently, economically, socially, politically. It would be great if these breathless screeds could encourage figuring out how to have tech benefit humanity.

To be fair, Elon's journey began with ~Paypal, which funded his later, more ambitious projects.

(Also not sure if it matters but I vouched for this after it was flagged. I doubt many YC founders [or PG] would be offended by this. It's clearly in jest.)

Back when Elon started PayPal, SaaS was the frontier!

The sad part is most of biotech stuff peddled ends up nowhere or quickly eaten up by big pharma. They do it for the money too. Somehow FAANG is worse?

This is just propaganda trivializing programming. Unfortunately all other professions put themselves on a pedestal whereas programmers constantly are self deprecating their profession.

If we already have UBI(universal basic income), brilliant people may be more willing to develop free software and change the world. I don't know why we haven't. Industrialization, education and welfare should solve every problem.

I sympathize with these ideas - I love free software, self-hosted stuff, etc.

But how are we supposed to make money without proprietary software or SaaS? People always say "it's free as in freedom, not free as in zero price" but in practice, free software usually is free as in zero price. I guess you can work for a company that will pay you to write free software or be sponsored to write free software, but outside of that, it seems pretty difficult to monetize ethically pure software.

This page is encouraging people to focus on building technologies that bridge the human-eco relationship, it makes no arguments about free software.

This is like reading from zero to one, but instead in a rather well put web version of a pamphlet.

I don't think I'm the intended audience for this. I don't particularly want to build the foundations of tomorrow. I want to enjoy a comfortable life with my family. If I get to write some fun software along the way then that's cool too, but certainly a distant second place.

Sadly just about all of hard tech/engineering is heavily gatekeeped by ABET and the like, even for pure SWE roles. So those of us without the credentials are doomed to a life of "drudgery" wasted away on silly web apps.

People often build SaaS because of the business model.

If they're not interested in generating income, Open Source is typically the next stop.

This smacks of AI trying to be profound.

I was hoping more for a tear-down of how rent-seeking SaaS has ruined software in general. Instead, we got a strange flavor of whataboutism

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Business and tech aren't the same thing, of course. Business was always that way, yes, and always will be.

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